A Father's Gift
John has a watch from his father he never wears, and Sherlock is curious as to why.
When Sherlock was six, he received his first violin: a worn but well-loved, dark-coloured hand-me-down passed down to his grandfather, then to his father, and now to him. Despite its age, the violin's acoustics had merely grown richer with time, tone rounding out through the years as if the very notes had been engrained into the wood themselves, soaking and staining like a cloth to water, a child his mother's words.
Sherlock played it masterfully.
"Just like a Holmes," his father declared, eyes twinkling at his precocious young son. "Born with an instrument in our hands and music in our hearts, we were."
And that was it, really: music. That was all he had got from his father. Sherlock had never thought of his father as intelligent – or even smart – but he was undeniably talented in music, with fingers that could pluck a tune from any instrument and a pair of lungs that sustained from piccolo to trumpet to euphonium. The brains had come from his mother, a mathematician and scientist, calculating and compassionate and gentle and fierce.
They balanced each other out. Between their two brilliant sons, they had enough to deal with, but they dealt with it well, and somehow the Holmes boys thrived under their care – until, of course, the boys deemed themselves smarter than their parents, both at the tender age of five.
Yet Sherlock retained a fondness for his father. The man who had given him his first violin, the man who had painted Sherlock's room a bright orange for a weekend experiment. The father who had found him when he had gotten high that very first time, trembling on his bed and muttering, muttering, think think think think think – and hadn't told his mother.
Inexplicably (but to the great relief of both boys), neither Sherlock nor Mycroft inherited their parents' inclination toward sentiment. It was all terribly dull.
So Sherlock never really talked about his family.
And neither did John.
Sherlock folded his hands over his armrests and stared at John, whose eyes were valiantly trying to focus on the paper but failing, heavy with fatigue and made heavier by the cloudy, grey weather. The doctor seemed to be affected more by the weather than most; Sherlock absently filed that into his mental list of things he found curious about John Watson – an ever-growing archive.
That in itself was curious. It had gone three months since their first meeting, and still John managed to catch him by surprise. Sherlock was quite disappointed by this, for he thought he'd deduced practically everything about this unassuming man that very day at St Bart's.
Of course, he'd been wrong about Harry the Sister, so he supposed that he should have expected it.
In order to avoid a similar mistake, the moment John moved in, Sherlock set about discovering everything he could about his new flatmate, estimating that it would take just four to five days to figure out anything worth knowing. By the end of the day, he knew that John drank his coffee black; absently hummed little, flat tunes while waiting for the kettle to boil; disliked finding rats' feet in the sink; was prone to silently fuming then quickly repressing his anger, boxing it up into some mysterious place; and typed with just two fingers on each hand. By the end of the week, he had catalogued that John regularly avoided responding to Harry's texts; took an average of 5.2 minutes per shower, quick and efficient; responded to his frequent nightmares by sitting on his bed until dawn (a telltale creak of the bed, the click of the lamp, then nothing) or doing the same in the patched red armchair with the telly on; and reacted sensitively to sudden sounds and touches: a small flinch at his best, a violent jerk at his worst. This, of course, was nothing unusual, since those who had spent time in war zones tended to be oversensitive to their environment.
After a month – still longer than estimated – there was nothing more to discover. Or so Sherlock assumed.
And then came the Pool, the bomb, the nod.
Sherlock then realized he knew very little after all.
Now, as they sat in their respective chairs, Sherlock observed on his flatmate's wrist a flash of silver. A watch. It was a Tag Heuer, with a black leather band and a handsome, framed square face. It had come into his notice at their first meeting, an accessory so outrageously extravagant in comparison to the rest of his wardrobe that it would have been difficult to not notice it.
However, what struck him more than the luxury of the watch was the fact that it didn't function.
It was a broken watch – or, at least, one without a working battery. But whenever he had to check the time, John dutifully glanced at the watch first, stuck permanently at 11:17, before fishing out his phone, as if the habit still hadn't worn off completely.
Four months, likely longer, that the watch had lost its only useful function, and still John took it off only to shower and sleep. Sherlock dismissed the possibility that John wore it for style; the former army doctor was nothing if not practical. That outrageous oatmeal-coloured jumper spoke for itself. A broken accessory would serve as an unnecessary distraction.
What made this even stranger was that during his one and only investigation of John's room upstairs – for although he had taken great care to leave everything precisely the way it was, John seemed to notice something was off and told him in no generous terms that he was not to go in his room again – Sherlock discovered a small, silver cardboard box in the back of the doctor's dresser, taped closed.
It looked like a box for a ring, but slightly larger. The tape holding the top in place had been replaced countless times, leaving bits of glue on the cardboard and rips from where it had been carelessly removed. The box itself was old, worn, the sides dirty from fingers: John's fingers, holding the box, rotating it around and around in his hand like a stress ball, placing it amongst the boxes at Harry's, shoving it to the back of the drawer.
When Sherlock opened it, tape curling sideways like wings, he found a watch. His brain recognized it immediately as an old Rado mechanical, a vintage watch, that had been discontinued for quite a while. Costly for its time. Even more valuable now. Although the box itself looked handled often, the watch was in perfect condition, if a bit rusty. It had never been worn.
A simple engraving on the back of the round face: To Johnny, From Dad.
Sherlock thought back to his violin, the name Holmes carefully pyrographed onto the rim in an elegant script, and of how proud he had been as a young child to hold something with such weight. Valuable in ways he couldn't quite understand but could feel. How he'd grieved when the violin, after years upon years of heavy playing, had cracked under his fingers, never to sing another tune.
Sentiment, sentiment. He shook his head.
He wondered why this watch, a similar sort of item with a similar sort of weight, sat in the back of the dresser, unused, while the broken one stayed firmly attached to John's wrist.
John was dozing now, head lolling to the side and hands loose on the paper. It was nearing 11 p.m., and Sherlock absently noted that John's watch would, in fact, be telling the correct time in approximately 17 minutes.
Sherlock would normally have let him startle awake on his own, as John usually did, but there was now a question that needed an answer.
And, to Sherlock's advantage, a tired subject had lowered guards.
"John," he said in a low voice. The man jerked up his head, blinked hard, twice, and looked at the newspaper as if it had appeared magically in his hands. He folded it and put it aside. Then he stared at Sherlock, who appeared completely awake and alert. And curious.
A flash of annoyance crossed John's face, which then settled into an impassive expression. Clearly John was too sleep-deprived to express his displeasure at being under Sherlock's invasive gaze, for which Sherlock was glad; he never liked it when John got into a huff, mostly because he refused to make him tea.
"What?" John grunted, rubbing a hand across his eyes.
"Why do you never wear that watch you keep near the back of your dresser?"
The words shot out sharply, as if Sherlock were accusing John of some disfavour, and the detective immediately thought that he should have softened his tone, just a little. He didn't know where that thought had come from. But no matter.
John looked taken aback, then confused.
Then irritated.
Sherlock leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin. Perhaps this could be used to his advantage. Fatigue and anger, to his delight, often meant emotional outbursts of the revealing kind. John tended to suppress whatever rage he harboured, going for long walks until it burned off – although Sherlock had followed often enough, for data – so this was a rare opportunity.
"What have I told you," John bit out, "about going in my bedroom without asking me?"
"You told me I was not to go in your room again." Sherlock considered for a moment. "Plus some colourful expletives. However," he continued, before John could speak, "I found the watch during my first investigation –" John gaped at the word 'investigation'. "– and thus before you informed me of your disapproval."
Surprisingly, John seemed mollified at this explanation. He settled back into his armchair, sighing. "I suppose I should have expected this when moving in with Sherlock Holmes," he muttered.
Sherlock gave a sniff – a clear yes, you should have – and John cracked a grin, then looked away.
"So," said the consulting detective, "the watch, John?"
John fiddled with the one currently on his left wrist. "I already have a watch, don't I?" he tried. Then, "I'd forgotten about it." Then, "I don't like mechanical watches."
Then, tiredly, "Can't you deduce why?"
A touch of pleading. Why? Sherlock frowned slightly at John, taking note of his clenched left fist, the tightness in his jaw. For some reason, this simple question had affected John, and Sherlock, despite what John assumed, couldn't put a finger on as to why.
He said slowly, "The one you're currently wearing doesn't work. It stopped working before we met. Before you moved in. It's stuck at 11:17, which, I'm sure, even you would have noticed, John, despite your tragic observational skills. It's completely useless."
"Well, it shows the correct time twice a day," John said drily.
Sherlock raised his eyebrow.
"Look. I said I didn't like mechanical watches."
"I would think any man would prefer a functional watch over a broken one."
"It's not broken, I just need to get the battery replaced."
"Why bother?"
John heaved a sigh, then met Sherlock's eyes for a brief second before looking away again. "You're really not going to let this drop, are you?" he said without enthusiasm.
"Hmm..." Sherlock paused for a moment as if he were considering it. "Nope."
"Fine." John sat up straight and fiddled with his watch for a moment or two, then held it out to Sherlock who leaned forward to receive it. With the firelight reflecting off its silver surface, Sherlock rotated the Tag Hueur in his hands, observing. Deducing.
It didn't take him long to declare his first observation.
"It's not genuine," Sherlock said in surprise.
"No, it's not," John replied, smiling a bit. "You should brush up on your watch index."
Sherlock ignored him in favour of the watch. The face of it, up-close, showed its wear. There were faint scratches along the glass and on the silver-frame, as well as a miniscule nick near eight o' clock.
"You've had it for... three years?"
"Two and a half."
"So you got it while you were deployed."
"Yes," John said simply. Then unexpectedly, he smiled. "I happened upon it at an Afghan market on my second tour there. A child came up to me with a box of them, all identical, and said one was five-hundred Afghani. I gave him six. He didn't even realize, I think. He just ran off. I reckon he might have been frightened of me." There was a wistfulness in his voice, a longing for old times.
There was no trace of bitterness.
Sherlock stared at him closely. "And you kept it for all this time because –?"
"Because it worked, surprisingly enough," John said, shrugging. "It worked. And I liked it. I still do. I like it because it's a reminder of... of who I used to be. God, this isn't embarrassing at all." He let out a small, humourless chuckle. "And I have no idea why I'm telling you this. No offense, of course."
"None taken," Sherlock replied, handing John back the watch. The doctor held it for a brief moment in his two hands and then strapped it around his wrist in a well-practiced motion.
"The watch had stopped when I woke in the hospital."
There was a contemplative, unbreakable silence before John looked up at Sherlock once more, allowing the conversation to resume, to veer in a direction which haunted him just as much as the first. "I don't wear the other watch because I got it from my father."
"'To Johnny, From Dad'," Sherlock quoted, and did not fail to notice the resentment in his flatmate's face before John buried it once more, his face a mask of neutrality. There was something practiced about that mask, as if John had worn it countless times before.
And Sherlock couldn't understand. It must have shown in his face, for John said:
"It's the name. 'Johnny.' 'Johnny-Boy'. I hate it. Any variation of it. And 'Jonathon', which my name is decidedly not short for, in case you were interested."
"Of course your name isn't short for Jonathon, any idiot would know that. But Harriet calls you Johnny. In her texts. I saw."
John laughed bitterly. "Yeah, she's a lot like my dad in that way."
Deduction one: There was no lost love between John and his father.
"Your father," Sherlock said suddenly. "His name was Jonathon."
"Yeah. How did you –?"
"Your birth certificate."
"Right."
John looked away briefly, then back at Sherlock. "I don't know why you want to talk about this." His voice was tired, reluctant.
"You don't like the watch," Sherlock said, hating this incomprehension that rarely plagued him.
"No, I don't like the watch," John said sharply. A warning. Drop it, Sherlock. "Why the hell would I like it?"
Why would he like it? Why did he like the violin? Sherlock remembered the handsome name burned onto the beautiful instrument, running his fingers down the strings, and performing, unsmiling, but secretly pleased, while his father, face bright with joy, watched on.
"Because – because it was from your father." He wished he didn't sound so lost. He was never lost.
At Sherlock's comment, John stilled, peering at Sherlock as if he were trying to deduce him as the detective so often did him. Then he sighed, rubbing a hand across his face. Suddenly, Sherlock noticed, John looked exhausted. There was no trace of the annoyance that was there before, just a resignation.
"Yeah, it was from my father."
"And you don't like it."
"No," John said shortly.
"Because –"
"Because I'm sure as you've already deduced, Sherlock, my dad wasn't exactly a picture-perfect dad." His tone was frank, his face carefully neutral; and in that practiced persona, Sherlock saw what he had never thought to deduce.
Deduction two: John had suffered at the hands of his father. Of course he had. Why hadn't he seen it before? There was always something, something with John that he missed – a critical blind spot in his otherwise perfect vision. John was a man who quietly stepped out of view, one who stayed in the sidelines, blurry, unread, until the time called and he came into focus with a clarity that left one speechless. There had been clues, so obvious now, that Sherlock had missed simply for the reason that John Watson was not a man who cowered before another man. He had neglected to see the child in favour of the soldier who often made it impossible to see beyond what he chose to display.
When Sherlock didn't offer him a response – no scornful "of course, John, I'm not an idiot", as he had expected – John leaned back in his chair, a look of genuine surprise taking over.
"You didn't know."
Sherlock said quietly, "No."
The gentle pitter-patter of raindrops filled the silence in the room. John stared into the empty fireplace for a minute, then two, before he met Sherlock's eyes once more. Sherlock sat, contemplative and still, and waited for John to speak. There was no need for a deduction this time, no need to be angry that he had missed something. In fact, he wished that he had never found out.
"He gave it to me when I was eleven," John said, referring to the old watch hidden deep, deep in his dresser. To Johnny, from Dad. "He only ever gave gifts when he wanted something. But for some reason, he didn't ask for anything in return. I like to think he was... apologizing. I don't know."
And Sherlock could see it now, a man who looked like John but was nothing like John, leaning down toward a little boy with a solemn face, presenting him with a gift with a smile made of metal and rust.
"But it wasn't one, an apology," Sherlock said before he could stop himself.
John winced, as if Sherlock had pressed upon an old – but tender – wound. He replied curtly, "No, I suppose it wasn't."
"Were you scared of him? Was Harriet? Your mother?"
He didn't know what prompted him to ask these questions. The answers didn't matter; they weren't facts, they were too subjective, too personal. Unnecessary.
How scared was the victim? What does it matter? It doesn't change anything.
And yet, Sherlock wanted to know. Needed to know.
There had been real fear in John, when he woke in a stone tunnel, his protests unheard in the face of idiotic certainty. But he was concussed, strapped to a chair, a gun aimed at his head, his girlfriend gagged and helpless and too far to reach. There had been fear when the young voice counted down its own horrific conclusion – five, four, three, two – in front of the fake Vermeer. There had been fear, yes, when he was wrapped in Semtex at the godforsaken pool, after hours alone with the snake and his pitch-black eyes.
But sometime between the moment John Watson walked into his life and this grey, wet evening, a part of Sherlock's mind had decided on a fact: John Watson was rarely afraid – if at all – unless it was for somebody else.
Which was quite... idiotic, really.
"We were all scared, Sherlock. But what can you do? What do you do when the man who's supposed to be your protector is –" John's voice caught in his throat. He shook his head, a sad, weary smile on his lips. "I'm well over thirty, now. It doesn't matter."
Yes, it does.
"He's still alive, then?" Sherlock had already deduced the answer.
John gripped the arms of his chair. "No, he died while I was on tour."
Sherlock tilted his head minutely. "Good."
"I didn't even go to his funeral," the doctor said in a rush. A confession for which he had not been asked – but one which had cried out countless times to be told – now released, muffled and protected under the grey canvas the weather duly provided. "They gave me some time off, but I didn't go. I had no reason to go, so I didn't go." His fingers were turning white against the blush of the chair.
"I wouldn't have expected you to."
"Harry was furious."
"She always is," Sherlock replied.
John didn't respond. Instead, he was staring at Sherlock, looking as if he were trying to figure out what was going on inside the detective's head. Then suddenly – "He didn't beat me, if that's what you're assuming."
"I –" Sherlock stopped short. That was what he had been assuming, simply by the intensity of John's reaction, the trembling in his hands that he couldn't quite conceal. Outside, the rain was no longer sprinkling; it was pouring, pounding on the windows which rattled in their wooden frames.
John abruptly stood – startling Sherlock – and marched over to the window to yank the curtains shut. And he stood there, with clenched fists, staring ahead into memories he did not offer to share. The muscles in his jaw were working, a clear sign that there was something, something waiting to be said, and so Sherlock waited.
Then John turned his head ever so slightly that Sherlock could see his profile outlined in the dim light of the flat. "Your dad," John said to Sherlock, "did he ever hurt you?"
That was not what he had been expecting.
"No," Sherlock said, surprised. "No, my father never raised a hand."
Apparently, this was unexpected for John. He turned fully, arms crossed over his chest. His hands were still in fists. And for an unfathomable reason, there was accusation in John's eyes. "Never," he said flatly. "Not ever." It was more a statement than a question.
"Not ever."
"Hmm. I always thought – never mind."
The pieces settled in Sherlock's head. "You thought," he said slowly, "that I had been abused."
"You certainly fit the trope," John said.
When Sherlock was five, he realized that he was quite a bit more intelligent than everybody else – well, everyone except Mycroft, who was then fifteen and weighing the pros and cons of a position in the British government. As the years went by, he quickly grew bored with the world and the predictable patterns within it; life wasn't challenging enough. It was dull, colourless.
So he turned to powders that would infuse the world with vividity again.
His parents were simple people with simple lives, the musician and the mathematician. Retired now, in their modest home in the countryside – the place Sherlock had left as quickly as he could. In his childhood, he had often found himself at the table, looking across at his parents, his supper forgotten. Simply observing them, their ordinary smiles and their ordinary "pass the pepper, Mycroft dear"s and their ordinary way of seeing the world, as if their two children were not extraordinary at all, but ordinary boys.
How he had loathed it. And he never bothered to conceal that loathing.
And yet, even in his deplorable times, they never raised a hand. They raised their voices, yes, but never left an imprint on his body. He suspected that his father, with his unending patience, had talked his mother out of a fair few slaps – which, Sherlock thought now, he had probably deserved.
But no, they had never hit him.
"My parents are unfortunately very ordinary," Sherlock said. He cracked a small smile, for John's sake. "Dull and ordinary, just like the rest of the world."
John snorted. "Oh, so they aren't from whatever top secret genius laboratory you and Mycroft escaped from."
"What on earth gave you that ridiculous idea."
"Sherlock, there are times when I don't even think you're human."
Sherlock groaned. "Please don't turn into another Anderson, John. We've enough idiots in London already."
John let out a laugh, a bit of tension easing from his shoulders. He uncrossed his arms, finally, and tilted his head toward the kitchen, indicating his wish to end the conversation. Sherlock would concede, for now. "Fancy a cuppa?"
Sherlock hummed his agreement and watched as John headed to the stove. There was a strange air of calm about him, as if he were trying to pretend that the previous discussion had never happened. Sherlock closed his eyes to think and waited for John to set the tea down on the side table and settle himself back in his armchair.
The windows rattled once more, and Sherlock opened his eyes to see John quickly look away. "It's really pouring out there," John remarked casually.
"Must we state the obvious?"
John rolled his eyes and sipped his tea. "It's nearing twelve," he said, "I better go –"
"Why did you keep the watch, then?"
Coughing, John put his cup aside. "I hoped you'd erased it already," he muttered.
Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "On an unsolved case? Not a chance."
"My life, Sherlock, is not a case for you to solve."
"Is it not?" Sherlock said loftily. Then seeing John's pained expression, relented. But, still, he needed to know. "Just answer me this, John: Why keep a watch from your abusive father you know you will never wear? Normally, I would say it is due to the inability to let go of the memories of one's imperfect childhood, a longing for the love of a father who never granted it. Perhaps you think it is the proof of his love, but something you could never bring yourself to wear because once you did, this belief might hold untrue. Maybe Harry never let you throw it out. Maybe you want to sell it once it becomes a true antique, and never wear it to preserve its condition." He paused. "But I know that none of these theories are true."
"Oh? Why not?" Despite the paleness in his face, there was curiosity in his voice which Sherlock had come to anticipate.
"Because you're not in denial; you know that he didn't love you. You said it yourself: 'He only ever gave gifts when he wanted something' – so you weren't fooled by the assumption that he did things out of some fondness for his son. You think he may have been apologizing – and perhaps that is true – but apologies made with material gifts do not hold evidence in love."
His flatmate sat quietly, listening. When Sherlock stopped, slightly taken aback at himself for using something so inconsequential as love as evidence, John prompted, "Go on. And Harry?"
And he was off once again. "Harry doesn't care about the watch; she is far too drunk far too often to care about an old watch from her dead father. She likely has forgotten about its existence already. And besides," Sherlock added, "you are not the only one who suffered at his hands, despite however much you tried to stop it."
John clenched his fists and gave a short, dark chuckle. "Maybe I should sell it off."
Sherlock said, "But you were hit."
"Yes, just like any other child," replied John. After a moment of hesitation, he continued slowly, "But most parents, should they hit their children, hit because they – they love their children, or so they claim. But mine – mine didn't even try to fool himself. Mine just hit because he wanted to feel the impact on his fists. But goddamn it, Sherlock" – he scrubbed the palm of his hands over his eyes – "I would rather be hit than be ignored. They carry different kinds of hurt, but at least I feel like I exist when the pain leaves behind a mark. Do you know what I mean?"
"No," the detective answered truthfully.
John lowered his hands and gave him a fierce look. "Good."
The watch on his wrist read 11:17.
"When I was a child," John said, "I tried, multiple times. I tried to take it out of the box, to wear it. I couldn't. I tried again before I left for Afghanistan, because he was ill. I thought maybe if I wore it and visited him, maybe he could get better. Irrational thinking, especially for a doctor."
"You wanted him to get better," Sherlock said softly.
"I didn't want him to die." John shrugged. "I loathed him, and I didn't cry for him, but I didn't want him to die."
Sherlock thought of the dog he once had, named Redbeard. His parents, sympathetic at the difficulty Sherlock had in making friends – not that he had wanted any in the first place – had brought him home a puppy with silky red hair.
He loved it instantly.
During its training, Redbeard bit him several times, and Sherlock studied the bite marks with delight. He documented the pain of the initial wound and the time it took for the skin to scab over and heal. His parents scolded him, rubbing cream and pasting plasters over the puncture marks he had tried so hard to observe in their natural state. Mycroft wrinkled his nose and said only, "You're lucky Mummy gave him shots, or you'd be foaming at the mouth."
But as the dog got sicker and sicker, plagued by an illness that made him limp and pant and whine until it couldn't muster the energy to do even that, it was Mycroft who was at Sherlock's side, bringing home white pills and red pills and helping his devastated little brother carry the dog from one place to another. When Redbeard died, Mycroft, for the first time in his seventeen years, took up a shovel and dug up their mother's flowerbed, dirtying his pristine suit without a single complaint.
"I'm sorry," he said to Sherlock as the body was lowered into the ground. "I didn't want him to die."
"You hated him," Sherlock said, blinking back the tears that threatened to fall. "You called him a stupid, dirty mutt."
"Regardless, I didn't want him to die." Mycroft watched the little boy tremble in his sadness, pure and deep. He sighed. "Don't cry, Sherlock. He's gone. Crying won't bring him back."
But when Sherlock let the tears fall onto the freshly turned dirt, Mycroft stood silently beside him until the younger boy fell to his knees from exhaustion. Then he carried him back in his arms, just as Sherlock had carried the dog to its grave.
Later that evening, Sherlock found a note slipped under his bedroom door. Written in Mycroft's looping cursive was a poem:
And, if their eyes should watch and weep
Till sorrow's source were dry,
She would not, in her tranquil sleep,
Return a single sigh!
Blow, west-wind, by the lonely mound,
And murmur, summer-streams –
There is no need of other sound
To soothe my lady's dreams.
Sherlock threw it out, overwhelmed by childish emotion and the agony of a death that throbbed like a bloody wound, but the poem itself never left.
"That watch," John was saying absentmindedly, "I – it's stupid. I don't even know why I keep it. I guess I just don't know... why he gave it to me, you know? And that keeps me hanging on to it."
"Understandable."
John glanced at him. "Is it really?"
With a half-smile on his face, Sherlock said, "Not really, no."
John laughed out loud, a genuine laugh. "You're not much of a therapist, Sherlock."
"I never claimed to be one."
The rain had stopped, leaving only the darkened pavement and glistening water-drops on the glass. Sherlock watched one raindrop quickly slide down the window and into another one, colliding and falling and colliding until it slipped out of view. John stirred his tea, staring into space.
Sherlock didn't really indulge in poetry; it conveyed meaning far too intangible for his world of science and equations and facts. But why did these two stanzas come to his mind now? Brontë's poem spoke of the futility of mourning, the endless cycle of nature that would continue on, uninvolved in any human sorrow.
The inability to let go was the unnecessary burden of the individual.
The raindrops would forever slide into each other, growing larger and larger until they fell out of view, unable to handle their own weight. Trust, Sherlock thought irrationally. They trusted each other, they went to each other, they joined together, they hoped together. But it did no good to hold on to something, anything, because it would get heavier and heavier and eventually make you fall. And Nature would watch on with her empty eyes.
"Your tea's gone cold," he told John.
"I know, thanks." John glanced at his watch once more – 11:17 – then at the clock on the mantelpiece. "It's late. Better get to bed."
This time, Sherlock did not stop him.
But as John climbed the stairs to his room, Sherlock called out, "John?"
John turned, eyebrow raised in question. "Yeah?"
And, if their eyes should watch and weep
Till sorrow's source were dry,
She would not, in her tranquil sleep,
Return a single sigh!
"Don't waste time in mourning something that never existed in the first place."
And John stood there for a long moment, as still and silent as a statue, until suddenly he moved again. Without looking back, he said, "Good night, Sherlock."
"Good night, John."
Blow, west-wind, by the lonely mound,
And murmur, summer-streams –
There is no need of other sound
To soothe my lady's dreams.
The next day, while John was at work, Sherlock went into his room, reached a hand into the drawer, pulled out the watch, then binned it. He was of half a mind to sell it to a broker, but somehow, he didn't think John would appreciate that. No, John would not.
If John noticed that the watch was gone in the following days, weeks, months – and he surely had – he never mentioned it again.
The End
Initially inspired by Mark Gatiss's Tweet on John's watch: "It's a knock off he picked up in an Afghan market."
The poem referenced in this story is "Song", by Emily Brontë.